Here's another nice show from Summer 98. I don't think this show is quite as good as the three preceding it, but it's no slouch either and it's very funky. The show starts out with another good Moma Dance. This one's groove starts out pretty laid-back, but its intensity eventually picks up. Next up is a standard Beauty of My Dreams. Sample in a Jar is played with a little extra punch. Guyute is well-played and I like the placement coming after two lighter songs. Then we've got the first Ghost on American soil of the Summer and it's excellent. The jam starts out with sweet wah funk from Trey while Page takes the melody on the Rhodes. The jam picks up when Page switches to the piano and Trey starts building the melody. When Page hops on the clav, he and Trey get really hooked up in a Manteca-like groove as the jam keeps building. The jam culminates with a rocking peak and a vocal reprise from Fishman as he shouts the refrain. As Ghost dies down, Limb by Limb starts up. I love Limb by Limb so I'm always happy to hear it and this one reaches a satisfying peak. After a brief ambient outro, a nice Roggae is played. Ghost and YEM in the same set is always great, and this is only the first set. YEM is really funky and thoroughly enjoyable. Overall, this is a great first set.

Set 2 opens with a raging Llama with Trey sounding like Hendrix as he uses the wah effect for much of the song. Wolfman's Brother is slow and funky. This is a typical Piper for the period with the long building intro and the ending coda. The composed part of Tweezer is really funky, as is the beginning of the jam. However, the jam doesn't really become anything more than a little space funk before Trey plays a few blues licks and the band segues into a good JJLC. McGrupp is nice and there's an unusual ambient jam after McGrupp which segues into DwD. This Disease is a hard rocking, type 1 beast, just what the set needed IMO. The Possum, Tweezer Reprise encore is good, as well.

Overall, I like the first set better than the second set.
Highlights - Moma Dance, Ghost through YEM, Llama, Wolfman's, Jam->DwD.

This was my first Phish show. Up until this concert I had been rocking the club scene (Fugazi, Fishbone, local rock acts, etc.) and had not been in an ampitheatre since my early teenage years when I caught some heavy metal shows. So the size of the venue threw me off for the first set, which was excellent. Won't go into a song by song review but the flow and selection of everything was just perfect and the YEM to close the first set was just perfect.

But the juic was in the second set and man was it flowing. The Llama set 2 opener was blazing and they never stopped. All in all, I had so much fun getting acclimated to the lot scene, meeting great people and listening to an amazing band.

The next night in Ventura sealed the deal for me and I've been seeing as many shows as possible ever since.

Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by and for Phish fans under the
auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation. This project
serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish
and their music. But we need your help!